Top Bush aides pushed for Guantanamo torture

Senior
officials bypassed army chief to introduce interrogation methods

By
Richard Norton-Taylor                                                        Read Spanish Version

This
article appeared in The Guardian on Saturday, April 19.

America’s
most senior general was "hoodwinked" by top Bush
administration officials determined to push through aggressive
interrogation techniques of terror suspects held at Guantánamo
Bay, leading to the U.S. military abandoning its age-old ban on the
cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners, the Guardian reveals
today.

General
Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff from 2001
to 2005, wrongly believed that inmates at Guantánamo and other
prisons were protected by the Geneva conventions and from abuse
tantamount to torture.

The
way he was duped by senior officials in Washington, who believed the
Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date,
is disclosed in a devastating account of their role, extracts of
which appear in today’s Guardian.

In
his new book, Torture Team, Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at
University College London, reveals that:

• Senior
  Bush administration figures pushed through previously outlawed
  measures with the aid of inexperienced military officials at
  Guantánamo.

• Myers
  believes he was a victim of "intrigue" by top lawyers at
  the department of justice, the office of vice-president Dick Cheney,
  and at Donald Rumsfeld’s defence department.

• The
  Guantánamo lawyers charged with devising interrogation
  techniques were inspired by the exploits of Jack Bauer in the
  American TV series 24.

• Myers
  wrongly believed interrogation techniques had been taken from the
  army’s field manual.

• The
  lawyers, all political appointees, who pushed through the
  interrogation techniques were Alberto Gonzales, David Addington and
  William Haynes. Also involved were Doug Feith, Rumsfeld’s
  under-secretary for policy, and Jay Bybee and John Yoo, two
  assistant attorney generals.

The
revelations have sparked a fierce response in the U.S. from those
familiar with the contents of the book, and who are determined to
establish accountability for the way the Bush administration violated
international and domestic law by sanctioning prisoner abuse and
torture.

The
Bush administration has tried to explain away the ill-treatment of
detainees at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by
blaming junior officials. Sands’ book establishes that pressure for
aggressive and cruel treatment of detainees came from the top and was
sanctioned by the most senior lawyers.

Myers
was one top official who did not understand the implications of what
was being done. Sands, who spent three hours with the former general,
says he was "confused" about the decisions that were taken.

Myers
mistakenly believed that new techniques recommended by Haynes and
authorized by Rumsfeld in December 2002 for use by the military at
Guantánamo had been taken from the U.S. army field manual.
They included hooding, sensory deprivation, and physical and mental
abuse.

"As
we worked through the list of techniques, Myers became increasingly
hesitant and troubled," writes Sands. "Haynes and Rumsfeld
had been able to run rings around him."

Myers
and his closest advisers were cut out of the decision-making process.
He did not know that Bush administration officials were changing the
rules allowing interrogation techniques, including the use of dogs,
amounting to torture.

"We
never authorized torture, we just didn’t, not what we would do,"
Myers said. Sands comments: "He really had taken his eye off the
ball … he didn’t ask too many questions … and kept his distance
from the decision-making process."

Larry
Wilkerson, a former army officer and chief of staff to Colin Powell,
U.S. secretary of state at the time, told the Guardian: "I do
know that Rumsfeld had neutralized the chairman [Myers] in many
significant ways.

"The
secretary did this by cutting [Myers] out of important
communications, meetings, deliberations and plans.

"At
the end of the day, however, Dick Myers was not a very powerful
chairman in the first place, one reason Rumsfeld recommended him for
the job".

He
added: "Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and — at the apex
— Addington, should never travel outside the U.S., except perhaps to
Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their
professional ethical code. In future, some government may build the
case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an
international court."